Unexpected Rules, 2004

2 Installations

GermanEnglish

The script is based on the “Clinton-Lewinsky Affair”, which arose from the nexus between power, sex, and globalized media and shows how multifaceted levels of interest, along with public images, ultimately render the “true” interpretation of an event impossible. Moser & Schwinger’s version of the affair does not follow a linear storyline that is shaped by causality and rational behavior. Rather, their cinematographic and scenic adaptation of the actors’ contradictory emotions, interests, and strategies creates a complex plot that forces the viewer to accept paradoxes as a part of reality. These different layers are integrated into a popular form of epresentation - a cross between a TV show and puppet theater.

Artists’ statement:
We conceived the lightbox as a place where politics stages its own performance. The fact that all protagonists are constantly on stage makes each character even more lucid. By distorting the facts in a plausible manner, we are attempting to set the characters’ spoken lines within contexts that, in the real world, exclude one another.

The film was first shown at the Biennale de São Paulo 2004 as part of a video installation in which visitors enter the reconstructed film set (a wooden lightbox lined with 1,300 colored bulbs), stand very close to the projection screen, and become first-hand witnesses of the negotiations within the intimate setting of the presidential family.

The script is based on the “Clinton-Lewinsky Affair”, which arose from the nexus between power, sex, and globalized media and shows how multifaceted levels of interest, along with public images, ultimately render the “true” interpretation of an event impossible. Moser & Schwinger’s version of the affair does not follow a linear storyline that is shaped by causality and rational behavior. Rather, their cinematographic and scenic adaptation of the actors’ contradictory emotions, interests, and strategies creates a complex plot that forces the viewer to accept paradoxes as a part of reality. These different layers are integrated into a popular form of epresentation - a cross between a TV show and puppet theater.

Artists’ statement:
We conceived the lightbox as a place where politics stages its own performance. The fact that all protagonists are constantly on stage makes each character even more lucid. By distorting the facts in a plausible manner, we are attempting to set the characters’ spoken lines within contexts that, in the real world, exclude one another.

The film was first shown at the Biennale de São Paulo 2004 as part of a video installation in which visitors enter the reconstructed film set (a wooden lightbox lined with 1,300 colored bulbs), stand very close to the projection screen, and become first-hand witnesses of the negotiations within the intimate setting of the presidential family.

Since 1988 Frédéric Moser (b.1966) and Philippe Schwinger (b.1961) have been collaborating, directing first an independent theatre company "l'atelier ici et maintenant" in Lausanne. Between 1993 and 1998 they studied at the Geneva University of Art and Design. They won the Swiss Art Award 3 times in a row (1998-99-2000) as well as the Providentia Young Art Prize. In 2001 they received the 6 month Scholarship from the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart and in 2002 the One Year Studio in Berlin from the Swiss Federal Office of Culture. In 2003 they were invited to the first residence program at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw. They represented Switzerland at the 26th International Biennal of Contemporary Art of São Paulo in 2004. They participated in the exhibition “History Will Repeat Itself” held at Kunst Werke Berlin, traveling to Dortmund, Warsaw and Hong Kong in 2007. Solo exhibitions include Kunsthaus Zürich, Cornerhaus Manchester, Mamco Geneva and Bétonsalon Paris. They presently live in Neuchâtel.